June – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Jamin
As soon as the others left, Jamin, who'd been eavesdropping from his room, lay into his father.
“Why are you putting him in charge of training our warriors?”
“Because he is the best at what he does,” the Chief said.
“-I- am the best!” Jamin said. “The only time I have ever seen him use a spear was at the solstice festival! He doesn't even know how to hunt his own food with one! While he was at his ship, he relied on Ninsianna to catch their fish.”
“Where he comes from,” the Chief said. “They can afford to maintain a standing army. I don't think he has ever had to provide for his own upkeep before. Just defend everybody else’s.”
“He is a drain on our village resources!” Jamin said. “He can't hunt. He can't fish. He doesn't know how to herd goats or sheep. And he doesn't have a trade. I overheard Needa tell her friends at the well the other morning that he is eating them out of house and home!”
“He has worked extremely hard helping the other villagers plant their fields and dig levies,” the Chief said. “And he hauls more water to the fields than a dozen men put together. He is trying to pull his own weight."
From the look in his father's eyes, Jamin didn't have to hear him utter the unspoken words 'you should too.'
“When we want to spend more time to train,” Jamin growled, “you say you don't have the resources to maintain a standing army. But when he says he wants to host warriors who aren't even from our village, you do whatever he wants!”
“He has knowledge of weaponry we can't even dream of,” the Chief said. “And he is a deterrent. There's a reason our village is the only one which hasn't been attacked. The Halifians are afraid of him. They are not afraid of you.”
“The Halifians don't attack us because I treat them with respect!" Jamin jutted his chin into the air to hide his twinge of guilt.
“You have consorted with our enemies.” His father's eyes bored into his skull. “And given them resources that would have been better kept inside this village! Resources you stole from me! They then turned around and used my money to purchase these new bows and arrows from some distant tribe.”
Jamin nearly blurted that they had done no such thing, for when he'd last visited Marwan, he'd seen no sign of such kinds of weapons, but he clamped his mouth shut, smart enough not to betray his plans. One thing he'd learned about treating with the People of the Desert was that they were not a single people, but a loosely tied coalition of clans whose tent-groups were only marginally tied by blood.
“I saw a threat,” Jamin crossed his arms in front of his chest. “And I took steps to eliminate it.”
“I saw an ally,” the Chief said. “And I took steps to bind that ally to our people as closely as possible. It's the difference between a warrior and a chief.”
“A warrior defends against all enemies,” Jamin snarled, “and fights all that come at him so that none dare touch him!”
“And a leader builds coalitions so that no one wishes to come at him in the first place,” the Chief sighed. “Jamin … you can't rule a village at the point of a spear. You can temporarily win it. But unless you learn to play nicely with others, you'll never to be able to hold onto it.”
A gust of wind blew the down the skylight with a small howl. 'Listen to your father. You know that he is right…'
“No warrior worth his testicles will train with a bunch of women,” Jamin warned. “Just you watch! This ridiculous experiment will fail!”
“We shall see,” the Chief said. “I admit that his demands are unusual. But he knows how to use these new weapons and we don't.”
“Let me be the one to teach the warriors to defend us,” Jamin pleaded. “I'm the best warrior you have. It should be me leading our warriors. Not this outsider!”
“I gave you leave to practice as many extra hours as you wanted,” the Chief said, “and you didn't. Do you think people haven't noticed you spend all of your time sneaking through the shadows following Ninsianna?”
“Who told you that?”
“It's no secret, son,” the Chief sighed. “It's not healthy. You've become obsessed with her." He gave Jamin’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze like when he'd still been a young boy. Jamin’s anger collapsed.
“I still love her,” Jamin said. “I can't believe she broke off our engagement to be with a man who can't even remember his own name.”
“You have to let her go,” the Chief said. “She has made her choice, and she has chosen him. This is not a battle you can win."
“It’s not right,” Jamin said. “How she treated me. If she didn't love me, then she never should have led me on the way she did.”
“Stop looking at this as your way versus his,” the Chief said. “Although he has few memories of his past, I've been a leader long enough to recognize that the army he comes from dwarfs anything we could ever imagine.”
“How do you know he's not lying?” Jamin asked. “Everybody lies about how brave they are.”
“He says absolutely nothing about his past,” the Chief said. “He doesn't remember. But I'm not blind. Whoever this emperor is who he still swears fealty to even though he can only vaguely remember him, he possessed the resources to build a sky canoe large enough for two of my houses to fit inside for a single soldier.”
“The sky canoe is broken,” Jamin said. “We only have his word it flies between the stars!”
“Every person in this village saw that ship come out of the heavens,” the Chief said. “Just because it's broken now doesn't mean there are no other warriors with sky canoes like his. And then he has a stick which fires lightning.”
“So he says,” Jamin said. “How come he never uses it?”
“He used it against you,” the Chief said. “You were terrified the day he shot lighting at you.”
“He has not used it since,” Jamin said. “We were startled by his appearance. That's all. I'm not sure what we saw.”
“Ninsianna had a vision of his sky canoe being smote out of the heavens by darkness,” the Chief said. “And then she had a second vision where evil beings come in a second sky canoe to consume our world.”
The wind gusted through the open window like an inferno, filled with heat from the merciless sun.
'Ki's agent has failed. The Evil One is coming…'
Jamin forced himself to ignore whatever conversation kept filtering in through the walls from outside the house.
“Crazy meanderings nobody can verify!” Jamin said. "It's all pretty convenient, don't you think? First he appears, and then his girlfriend makes up wild stories about even scarier demons so that we will accept him.”
“I don't like the way things have been transpiring outside of this village,” the Chief said. “The Kemet traders saw stars fall upwards, into the sky, as they traversed the great desert, not down. Given the winged ones appearance and the legends, preparing for the worst is prudent.”
'You -must- prepare…'
“Have you all gone mad?” Jamin blocked his ears to tune out the whispers which filtered through the walls. “Will you listen to yourself? Swords of gods and sky canoes and sticks that shoot lightning and demons that consume the earth? Just because we stumbled across one winged freak doesn't mean the world will come to an end. You're playing right into his hands!”
“Jamin,” the Chief said. “If you don't want to train under him, that's fine. Put your concerns into actions, not words. Stop following Ninsianna around and train the other men to use a spear and atlatl.”
“My warriors are already the best!” Jamin bragged.
“Not your warriors,” the Chief said. “The village warriors. All of the young men and women you've been putting down all these years because they are not as quick to learn as you are. You need to teach them. If the strife Ninsianna foresees comes to our village, we need more warriors than the handful you have hanging on your every word.”
“But t
he other men are inept,” Jamin said. “It takes forever just to teach them the simplest thing.”
“Do you want to be chief of this village someday, or not?” the Chief said. “Because the chief doesn't have the luxury of picking only the best. He has to work with what She-who-is has given to him. I'm giving you the opportunity to prove that you can do a better job of preparing our village for attack than the winged one can.”
'Think how the others will look up to you when you're prepared for the dark times to come…'
“But…” Jamin ignored the voice carried on the wind and picked up the slender arrow. “These are just sticks." He snapped it with one hand. “They are but twigs.”
“No buts,” the Chief said. “You think you can do better? Prove it.”
Jamin stalked out, shaking his head to be rid of that annoying ringing in his ears. His father was right about one thing. It was time to train his warrior troop in earnest. Hunting down Siamek and the others, he told them what he had in mind. Nobody wanted to train with a bunch of girls. They would make certain of it.
Chapter 60